ALEXANDRE DUMAS was born in 1802 in France. His father, a general in Napoleon's army, died when Dumas was three years old, leaving Dumas and his mother impoverished. When he turned twenty-one, Dumas moved to Paris, where he worked for the powerful duc d'Orléans. He wrote popular plays and then novels, including The Three Musketeers. In 1851, he fled from his creditors to Brussels and then to Russia, and in 1861, he joined the fight to unite Italy, founding the revolutionary newspaper L'Indipendente. He died in 1870.
UMBERTO ECO is the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. He died in 2016 in Milan.
